


Boundless as the Sea

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [9]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Beach Sex, Day At The Beach, Declarations Of Love, Dream Sex, Dreamsharing, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Reincarnation, Shakespearen style language, Sherlock and John coming to terms with their older souls, Underwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock are taking some time off in the aftermath of the Moriarty's suicide - and make some choices about the knowledge they share that they were once (and sometimes still are) other people, and fated soulmates. Later, in dreams, Richard and Khan reaffirm their promises and their love, for they are the sea and the moon, the tide and the shore, fearless and strong, and belong together always, always, always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boundless as the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Romeo and Juliet:  
>  _“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,_  
>  _My love as deep; the more I give to thee,_  
>  _The more I have, for both are infinite.”_
> 
> The word 'fossicking' is brought to you by Atlinmerrick. :D

For once, Sherlock was not complaining of boredom, despite the fact there’d been no cases for a week, and despite the fact he was sitting at a private beach in a Caribbean resort, in a beach chair, shaded from the too-bright sunlight, looking at the blue and sparkling sea, drinking some ludicrous concoction of coconut milk, rum and pineapple.

John was sitting on the end of Sherlock’s deck chair, running his hands over Sherlock’s injured leg, massaging it gently and seeking any indication of pain or swelling. Sherlock wished John wasn’t being so clinical about it. He wished John would run both hands up his thigh, and into the leg of his swimming trunks, and then…what was that entertaining Australian expression? Go fossicking. A term originally used to refer to recreational prospecting for precious stones and metals. _Fossicking for the family jewels. Yes, John, do that instead._

“How’s that? Not hurting?”

“No,” Sherlock said. John was still fussing about the extra strain on the leg during that whole bizarre incident with Moriarty and Moran.

“And your arm?”

“ _Fine_.” Sherlock didn’t even bother to look at the cut on his arm, where Moriarty and sliced him with Mycroft’s rapier. No stitches had even been necessary for the shallow cut.

Sherlock sighed, closed his eyes and then, when his mind confronted him with the twin images of Moran and Moriarty with their throats cut, opened them again to look at the sea.

“Sherlock."

“I’m fine.”

“Sherlock.”

The weary tone made Sherlock look at John, who seemed as troubled as he himself felt.

“I’m fine,” he said, more gently.

“I know,” said John, “I don’t mean to fuss. It’s stupid. I know.”

Sherlock shoved the drink at him. “This is a stupid beverage. I’d rather have coffee.”

John took the stupid beverage, in its stupid half a coconut, and sipped it. He grimaced. “God, that’s awful. Why on earth did you buy it?”

“I didn’t. Someone in a sarong gave it to me. It was easier to take it than argue, then he left before I could throw it at his stupid face.”

“Christ. The mood on you.” But all John did then was to rise, turn and pitch the thing into the sea. The liquid flew out of it, a pretty arc of creamy froth. The shape of it looked too much like the blood had, arcing out of Moran’s throat as Moriarty killed him, though, so John sighed and sat on the end of the chair again.

“It doesn’t have to mean more than we let it,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not possible.”

“Fine. It’s not possible.”

They sat silently for a few moments.

“I-” began Sherlock, and he stopped, then he tried again. “I have my suspicions that Mycroft has cell samples – his and mine – at Baskerville. I… worry… that somehow. Though it can’t be possible. The samples shouldn’t survive that long without decaying, no matter how well they’re stored. But-”

“Oh, Jesus,” muttered John, realising where Sherlock was going with this, “You mean…?”

“It’s impossible,” said Sherlock, but he sounded doubtful.

John wanted to agree with him, but of course he didn’t know the extent of the work at Baskerville, or what might develop in the future. If Baskerville had cell samples of Sherlock Holmes, then possibly, just maybe, those cell samples might be divided and cloned and preserved for the next several hundred years. They might possibly be the starting point of Khan Noonien Singh, whom they both knew and pretended not to know was the soulmate of Richard the Third of England.

Dear god. It was insane. And therefore, they did not think about it, and when they did, they tried not to talk about it, and when they did that, they pretended not to believe it.

Except right here and now, on this beach in the Bahamas, where they’d come for just a week to escape London, Mycroft, and what had happened in that derelict hall; trying to recover their equilibrium.

“John.”

John looked up at him.

“Whatever … whatever that was. Whatever this is. I’m letting it go.”

“Sherlock?”

“If Mycroft has my cell samples, I’m leaving them there at Baskerville.”

“But-”

“If it’s true. If we’re not insane and this is true, then if Khan is never created, then Richard will never… he’ll never…”

“He’ll never be loved,” said John softly, “He’ll never find he can be more than rage.”

“And he’ll never be you.”

“I-”

“It's possible that I’m recursive in this scenario. If Khan’s even real, maybe he’s – we are – a closed loop, from me to him and back.”

“Maybe now they’re… we’re… together again, things will change. Surely they - we - they will stay together now. Always."

"They," said Sherlock.

"We," decided John, "It’s like… we're each one soul, two memories. They don’t think of themselves as _not_ us, just… earlier versions of us."

Sherlock shifted on the chair, his leg aching less now than his head.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. You had it right the first time. It’s who we are now that is important. If we have memories of a past life – rather than, as I say, merely being simultaneously deluded – then let them be. Now Moriarty is dead, perhaps they’ll stop popping up at inconvenient moments.”

“Or convenient ones. I wish I could remember how I used a sword like that. It’d be handy. But I seem to have lost the knack of it again.”

“Well, I don’t wish I had _his_ memories. He knows the names of far more planets and stars than I have use for.” And there were worse memories, too, that were thankfully little but dim, horrible, brutal _intimations_ filled with remorse and sorrow.

John was frowning, so it appeared he had the same problem. Neither of them knew much about Khan, who was not a figure from their history, though his name indicated he possibly wasn’t exactly a little ray of sunshine. But King Richard the Third? That grisly monarch can’t have held many memories that John much relished to recall.

“Mostly, what I remember,” said John suddenly, “Is what Richard thinks about you. Khan, I mean. He loves that man like….like…” echoes came to him, “Like the ocean loves the moon.”

“Like trees love the sun,” said Sherlock, and then he looked directly into John’s eyes. “Like I love you.”

John’s face broke into that beautiful smile. “And like I love you.”

“So, enough then. If we dream, we dream, but the rest of it can go hang, and Mycroft with it.”

“Good plan.” This time, John placed his hands over Sherlock’s ankles and then ran his palms, warm and sensuous, alongside Sherlock’s shins, along either side of his knees, curving around to the inside of his thighs, until his fingers dipped into the legs of Sherlock’s swim trunks. And he explored, with delicately brushing fingertips.

_Recreational prospecting. Fossicking. In my pants. Excellent._

“There’s coconut butter in the room,” John said, voice low, brushing his thumb over the head of Sherlock's thickening cock as it appeared below the left hem of his trunks, "Edible coconut butter. And I don’t want to use a plate.” John moved too, so that his own swelling crotch was pressed against Sherlock's foot. Sherlock wriggled his toes and John did some more _fossicking._

“I have several uses for a mango I’ve been wanting to try on you,” said Sherlock. There was decreasing space for John’s two busy hands _and_ Sherlock’s lengthening cock inside the swim trunks, so it was clearly time to remove either John’s hands or, much more productively, the trunks.

John gave Sherlock’s erection another encouraging rub and then he jumped up, throwing a towel at his beloved. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s go make the sheets filthy.”

It was the least stupid thing – and in fact the very best one – that had happened all day.

*

Richard, naked, stood on the sand and squinted out to sea. He did not truly remember the journey from their glade, following their cleansing river to this bright and sunny shore, but the geography of their dreaming world was not constrained by mortal maps.

"I cannot swim," he said out loud," To bathe in the river is a trifle, but to submit myself to the vast and endless sea does, I will confess, give me pause."

"You cannot imagine I would allow harm to come to you," said Khan from behind him on the beach.

In truth, Richard could not imagine such a thing. Harm may come, certainly, but never because his Khan allowed it.

“No, my love,” he agreed, “I cannot. And I have imagination enough for it; yet nothing in my heart or mind could encompass such a thing. Let sea and storm buffet this uncertain vessel as it may; I know that I am safe with thee.”

He turned then to look at his beloved, just as naked as he but infinitely more beautiful in Richard’s eyes – his Khan as pale as the moon, or as a statue in marble of an ancient God, the embodiment of strength and grace in every sinuous line. Yet no statue could ever be as warm, as yielding, as divine in aspect and affection as this man, his soulmate.

“I know that look,” said Khan, and he opened his arms wide. Richard stepped into the circle of his love’s embrace and tilted up his face, eyes closed, waiting. Khan laughed softly and bent to kiss his Richard’s mouth, his arms wrapped strong around that noble, twisted back.

“You, my prince, grow tanned under the sun,” he said when he had kissed his love enough to sate his skin’s most immediate thirst for him.

“It is most strange to have the warm sun so bold upon my nakedness,” said Richard, his left arm resting around Khan’s waist. He had, in his unhappy life, been naked before few people. His mother and wetnurse had hidden the deformities with which he had been born, bathing him even in infancy in swaddling or robes, so as not to be offended by a shape they told him offended even God. As he reached manhood, he had learned to follow their example, lest his bent frame be greeted with horror or, worse, pity. Scorn was better than either, yet still, whether bedding wife or whore, he had covered himself. It still seemed to him a gift that his Khan looked on this ill-made house of flesh and bones with both love and desire.

Khan bumped Richard’s nose with his own, then kissed it, then kissed his prince’s noble brow. “The sun loves you,” he said, “and makes you gold as honey.”

“And thee, my lord of starlight, retreat before this honey-making sun, chased like a shadow to preside as king of shades among the trees.”

Khan laughed softly at Richard’s mildly disapproving tone. "Our dreaming sun on this dreaming beach likely cannot harm me, but in truth, I was formed and grew in the dark spaces between worlds, far from the heat of a burning star. My strength is undiminished, but starlike suns, too bright, burn my pale skin. You are the only sun that was ever kind to me."

Richard nuzzled against Khan’s chest, smoothing his hand up and down the small of his shapely back. “Then I will be no friend to this sun. I will turn my back on its kindness if it is so unkind to thee.”

“Oh, no, my heart,” Khan protested gently, “I will not permit that this light be prevented from crowning you simply because my maker made me vulnerable in this one thing.” He knelt on the soft ground in the shade of the sprawling tree and bowed his head, waiting.

In the way of their dreamworld, Richard found beside them a bowl filled with a cool, pale cream. He sniffed at it, judged it acceptable and dipped his fingers into it. He smeared it over Khan’s neck and shoulders, down his back and hips. Khan moved to his hands and knees so that Richard could smooth the mixture over his backside and thighs as well.

“The sun does not shine in those places, Richard,” Khan said, but his delight was as evident in his voice as in his prick’s rising response to the intimate slide of Richard’s fingers into his cleft.

“I may yet be moved to display thee thus to the jealous sun,” said Richard nonchalantly, rubbing his fingers slowly against Khan’s entrance, then below, to anoint his balls and further, along his hardening shaft, “And show that unkind orb how best to love thee.”

Khan grunted as he pushed back against Richard’s fingers. “None can love me as well as you; and I do not want them, even if they think they can. You are the only sun in my sky, Richard.” He looked over his shoulder at Richard, who had withdrawn his pleasuring hand. “Richard?”

His Richard gave him that look again, that blend of adoration and wonder. Khan sat up to face Richard, running his fingers through his beard and hair. “You are the only sun for me,” he said again, and kissed his love.

Richard leaned hungrily into the kiss and while thus engaged, gathered more of the protective cream on his fingers and smeared it over Khan’s chest, using the slipperiness to tease Khan’s nipples and navel and belly and soft, pale thighs and hard, flushed prick, until Khan was quite overwhelmed and with a cry, anointed in turn Richard’s hand, stomach, thighs, with come.

“Thou art my only sky, my only star and moon, my world,” Richard breathed into Khan’s gasping mouth.

"Let me touch you," Khan breathed back, "I would touch every part of you to show how precious you are to me."

Richard drew a breath and leaned his forehead against Khan's chest. "Oh my prince of the sky, my moonlit angel, please, yes."

Now Richard sat on the soft ground, head bowed, the haughty king humble and suffused with tender amazement, still, at how his love pressed his majestic hands (that had been taught death – the purpose for which he'd been made – long before learning gentleness) to this misshapen frame.

"Sshh," murmured Khan, rubbing his hands over Richard's uneven shoulders, the twist in his spine, his arms both withered and whole, "Forget them all, those who did not love this body as I do, those blind idiots who gave you cruelty where you were owed protection. They are dust and spent air, and you are my Richard, my prince, my sun, my love, and eternal. Sshh now, and let me know every warm span of you."

Khan's firm, loving hands kneaded muscles that ached from their misalignment; that ached, too, for touch so long denied. Richard's hunched back and blasted arm felt warm and _right_ , and he sighed and submitted with closed eyes to this act of love.

Finally, Khan, sitting behind Richard, wrapped both arms around his love and gently pulled him back to lie against his broad chest. Khan kissed Richard's temples and the wet corners of his eyes. "I love you beyond all reckoning," he whispered, "and when you fought and defeated that snake, Moriarty, I wished for all to see your courage and prowess."

"I am a right good swordsman," Richard agreed with his haughty humour, "Why, had I _two_ arms I would not be twice as splendid." He grinned then, at the sensation of his Khan's own smiling mouth pressing kisses over his odd-shaped shoulders. Then he sobered. "When he cut thee, I would have flayed him, skin from flesh. I would have hewn his liver and made him eat it for thy slightest hurt. But my promise to thee was to forsake murder. And so I kept my vow to thee, and to myself. Tell me, beloved, was I right to do so?"

"Yes, and yes, and always yes, my prince. We are new-made men. And so did I keep my promise to you. My waking form is not so strong as this body, yet it could do harm enough. The will of Sherlock was to commit greater harm. His rage that his John, our Richard, was so threatened was profound. We would together have shed blood infinitely less precious than yours. Yet we tried to force Moriarty's surrender, not knowing how little he valued Moran, who valued his master too much. Their own perfidy and emptiness slew them at the last, and needed neither your hand nor mine to despatch them."

"You do not regret that you duelled not with the snake?"

"But I did, my love. Did you not hear me tell him so? You and I are one in these matters."

"Yet there is more to it."

Khan leaned his cheek on Richard's hair. "My Richard knows me well. Aye. I was made to be a warrior, purpose-built as a weapon. To resist that compulsion, to surrender that strength to you..."

"To be the resting lion while the hawk defended thee," said Richard.

"Yes. It was a victory over my own self. Though do not doubt that I would have been both shield to you and death to him should I have perceived you were in mortal danger."

"Doubt not that I shall never doubt thee."

Khan kissed his hair. "Your faith in me gives me strength to withhold my strength. But you did not need my arm more than my equal faith in you. You were magnificent, Richard, and noble, and a king among men indeed. I am proud that you are mine, and that I belong to you."

Richard, face turned up to the light, laughed for happiness, and wept for it too. "Oh, I am yours, yours, yours until the suns and stars are no more, and I will belong to thee still, forever after then too. My Khan. Oh, that you are mine, too, is a treasure beyond reason, but I will hold to thee, I will, for all time."

"Come then," said Khan, "Come into the sea with me." He kissed Richard’s ear, yet Richard sensed a hesitation in Khan, as though he thought Richard, who could not swim, would refuse.

_My godlike love never fails to show tenderness to he who never knew nor needed it, until we met. My Khan surrenders thus his strength; to lay aside that power and noble crown that was the very point and pinnacle of that former life, and in that life he was feared by all, and held to account as leader of all. And so, I will give my trust to he who was never in his life trusted by those not of his brood, nor permitted respite, nor allowed to be nought but The Great Khan. Were he bid me walk into a volcano, I would willingly go. What have I to fear from my love, except that he should be taken from me?_

"I will go with thee," he said, taking Khan’s hand, "and make the sea my friend, if it be yours."

They rose, and Richard walked with Khan into the waves that swelled and hushed upon the sand, and burrowed under his feet, undermining his gait. He held still a moment and Khan squeezed his hand.

Richard, thus emboldened, pushed himself into the waves, and began to sink.

And in the moment when he thought he must breathe the thick and briny foam instead of air, his Khan was wrapped around him and lifted him to the surface, and held him buoyant against his own lithe and muscular body, which moved in the water as though a creature of the waves, born to its pulse and depth.

“You named yourself the sea,” Khan reminded him warmly, “And I the moon, and I will call you to me, as the moon does the ocean, and keep you drawn to me. You will not drown.”

Richard held hard with his one good arm. “Aye, love. Thou art the pearly moon and I the surging sea, and I am content. I will not fear the sea, as I once feared my own savage self, from whom I could not flee. I have shed that bloody purpose, and paid thrice and thrice and thrice again for the vicious hate that I mirrored out of my self-hated heart onto the world. I have a new heart now, and this new sea is that heart's blood. I will trust its new purpose and my beloved's promise. If you have a will to lead me, then love, lead me where thou wilt. I shall follow until the end of all days. _”_

“Then let me lead you to wonders, my prince, that I have longed to share with you. Take a deep breath and hold it. When you need to breathe again, I will know it, and show you how to breathe under the sea.”

Richard, giving his life wholly into Khan’s hands, did as he was bid. He drew long, deep breaths , as though preparing for battle, and on the third breath, he drew and held his lungs full to bursting, as Khan, more relaxed and more deeply, did likewise.

And then Khan, arms wrapped around Richard, pulled them both under the waves.

Richard for the merest moment had an inclination to panic, but Khan’s arms around him were strong, and he let go of the fear even as he held hard to his love. Khan seemed not to notice either tension or its release, but he kicked hard with his feet and swam down into the blue depths.

In the way of dreams, everything was real and unreal all at once. Richard could see as through a window, and the salt of the sea was nothing to his eyes. He kept one arm about Khan’s neck and the other drifted with the water and their motion, like a seaweed limb, weightless and gently unruly. Khan, from time to time, would capture the limb and circle it closer to them again – and at other times would let it trail through the water, through shoals of fishes and strange, soft plants that would flutter and flinch and then bloom under those fingers again.

And although that arm and hand would not obey Richard’s thoughts, yet there was feeling in them, and Richard felt the whisper of living things through his fingers, against his skin. Inquisitive things, and things that cared not that he was an alien in their world. Little fishes nibbled briefly at his skin and darted away, their bright colours as brilliant as gems in the watery light.

When, after a time, Richard felt the pressure in his lungs and his ears and behind his eyes, Khan drew his body close and sealed his mouth over Richard’s, and in the kiss that followed, he gave breath into Richard’s mouth and body. Richard closed his eyes and wrapped his legs around Khan’s waist and drew in the air that had lived in Khan’s lungs. Gave it back in a steady breath. Breathed in again. Later, Khan would explain how his body had been built to achieve more on less oxygen; that the breath he’d taken would have served Khan for an hour or more, and so was easily shared.

All Richard knew at that moment was that Khan breathed for them both; that his Khan gave him air and life and beauty, as he had from the first.

Stroking the drifting fronds of Richard’s hair, Khan smiled and withdrew from the kiss. He stroked Richard’s back too, then took them further through the deep blue sea.

Khan swam them alongside a great, spotted whale that undulated in the ocean and sang, plaintive, to its kin. He breathed for them again, and then held Richard as a pod of dolphins swam playfully around them. Khan held him, too, when the dolphins were replaced by the cold, sinuous grace of a shark who eyed them with lazy speculation. Richard returned the look, glare for glare, and the shark, declining the challenge, swam away.

And then Khan swam up towards the pale light and into the air again, and they both took in great laughing gulps of air.

“The world is full of wonders I never knew existed,” said Richard, spluttering only a little as the sea washed over his shoulders. 

“I saw them but until I knew your love I never truly appreciated them,” said Khan, “When I went back to my own time, I forever saw beauties that I wanted to show you, but I never got the chance, and then I forgot myself to grief and rage. I am glad to show them to you now, at least.”

Richard, still with one arm about Khan's shoulders, hitched his legs around Khan’s hips and in the embrace of the salt sea, he pressed his lips to Khan’s ear.

"For sharing these beauties with me, I give thee thanks." He kissed Khans cheek. "From boyhood the vast and secret ocean compelled me with its power, but my family forbade it me and swore it would drown me, though whether 'twas in jest or hope it was hard to tell. My brothers would carry me out beyond the measure of my legs and there threaten to leave me to succumb to its cruel kiss or to be devoured by the monsters that abided therein. I began to long for the world beneath the air, to see if it were as savage as the world above. Until now, I never knew it was beautiful."

"The ocean and the stars among which I once travelled are alike, full of danger and serenity both. I wish I could show you the spaces between worlds. You would fill them up with your courage."

"You are powerful like the sea," Richard murmured, as his legs slid slow and sensual over Khan’s hips and thighs, bringing their rising manhoods close together, "but when you came to me you, were not a thing of teeth and tentacles but instead a balm. You made me buoyant and held me up in your embrace, as does this loving sea."

Khan and Richard kissed, and in doing so they sank into the warm water, but the loving sea held them up and sent thick and swelling waves to them, to lift and carry them. They rose, laughing and spluttering, then Khan bid Richard hold fast. Khan rolled onto his back and Richard clung to his front and they rode the waves back to shore. Bodysurfing, Khan would have called it, had Richard asked, but Richard merely kept his purchase and when the sea delivered them to shore, they lay in the hushing, foaming flow of low waves on soft sand in the shade of an overhanging palm tree, kissing and fondling and thrusting, bringing their two bodies together, sea and moon, tide and shore, drawn ever together, powerful and fearless in their mutual surrender.

After, Richard slid onto his back on the sand, water lapping his legs and hips and stomach, and held Khan’s hand as the stars came out in the black velvet sky.

"You, love, are the strong, embracing waves on which, exulting, my full heart doth crest," he said softly.

Khan raised Richard's clasped hand and kissed his fingers. "And you, my prince, the shore on which my lonely power whispers, all serene, to rest."

*

Sherlock woke in the night to find they'd drifted off to sleep after their shower (necessary to sluice off the mango juice and more besides) with the beach cottage doors wide open. From where he lay, he could see the waves breaking on the sand, and a field of infinite stars.

John, sprawled beside him, looking perfectly debauched and content, sleepy-grunted and snuffle-burrowed into Sherlock's side. Sherlock watched the way moonlight softened John’s features; made him look younger, less worried, and more ethereal too.

 _You are a miracle to whom I have no right,_ Sherlock thought, and then he kissed John's brow. _No. That's not true. We are each other's miracle. We have always been that_.

John raised his face, mostly asleep, and Sherlock kissed the offered mouth.

"Love thee," mumbled John before snuggling in close.

Sherlock rubbed his cheek against John’s soft hair. "And I love you. Always. Always. Always."

With the sigh of his love’s breath on his skin, the sigh of the ocean without, Sherlock drifted back to sleep.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Boundless as the Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4660131) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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